"To live in a old shack by the sea, And breathe the sweet salt air, To live with the dawn and the dusk …" The Eden Ahbez track Full Moon that played over the end of Fargo's second episode on Sunday night was a unusual choice to soundtrack the scene with Mr Numbers and Mr Wrench getting busy with their ice drill – a pensive, dreamy meditation that undercut the violence and took the mood into a weirder space. But it wasn't the only example this week of TV shows using songs that you might not expect to hear – or even know. On Monday night, viewers of John Simm's new thriller Prey were intrigued by who was singing in the final scene of the first episode (it was the Cranberries, No Need to Argue).

This trend for using more obscure(ish) tracks from the past is refreshing in a time when getting on the OST of a TV drama has become an established part of the music industry's promo cycle for new songs. Last week even Bruce Springsteen tried debuting tracks from his last album, High Hopes, on The Good Wife. For me, hearing songs that aren't in the charts or getting a big push feels a bit more interesting – you're not likely to hear them in too many other places. With that in mind, here's a quick playlist of songs like Full Moon – as ever, feel free to add your own below.

The music on Mad Men has been one of its consistent markers of time, as the staff of SC&P move through the decades; this heavy, brown-acid cover of the Supremes classic from Vanilla Fudge felt like a good way to usher in the dark days of Nixon's America.

As another period piece, The Americans has been making good use of its early 1980s setting to play everything from Phil Collins (In The Air Tonight) to Peter Gabriel (Games Without Frontiers), Fleetwood Mac (Tusk) and Echo & The Bunnymen (Pictures On My Wall). This album cut from Robert Smith is taken from the Cure's atmospheric 1982 release Pornography.

From Wu-Tang Clan to Grinderman, Bo Diddley to Captain Beefheart, True Detective's soundtrack is filled with swampy, dark, brooding numbers – thanks to the taste of music supervisor T Bone Burnett. This freak-folk number from Vashti Bunyan featured in one of the show's lighter moments as we see Detective Hart (Woody Harrelson) and court reporter Lisa Tragnetti playing cops and perps outside of office hours.

This scratchy tune from 1935 set the scene as we saw Lizzie playing catch (with a zombie) through the kitchen window of the house where Carol, Tyreese, Mika and Judith take shelter on their way to Terminus. Songs from the Ink Spots have also featured in the video game series Fallout – another post-apocalyptic pop culture franchise.

A Marty Robbins cassette (cassette!) featured in the (very) cold open for Breaking Bad's last episode Felina – a good example of diegetic music – a soundtrack that's being played as part of the action on screen. The cowboy classic El Paso, with its tale of a cowboy so in love with a Mexican girl that he shoots a man just for having a drink with her, featured on Robbins' 1959 album Gunfighter Ballads And Trail Songs.

OK, this last clip is in a slightly different league, but really, who'd have thought we'd be seeing Sigur Ros members Jonsi Birigisson, Georg Hólm and Orri Páll Dýrason moonlighting as a Westeros wedding band?

What other songs on TV soundtracks have had you checking the credits or reaching for Shazam? Let us know in the comments below.